Late in the Season (9 page)

Faint steps on the boardwalk. He was coming.

The footsteps approached, and went past the entry to her family’s house: someone walking to the beach.

It made no sense to just wait out here, agonizing. She ought to do something, check the fish, mix them drinks. What if he wanted a drink? Had they left any liquor in the house?

In the kitchen, she found a bottle of cooking sherry and a small flask of brandy—not a great brand either: for cooking too, she supposed.

“Hi! Anyone home?”

Calm yourself, Stevie. He’s here.

She felt like a parody of her mother, sweeping graciously out of the kitchen to greet her guest.

He’d dressed as though for a garden party: beige open-necked shirt of some silky material, pale blue jacket, white pants pleated at the waist, cinctured with a thin beige belt, and white shoes. Tan, dark-haired and bearded, he looked smashing—like an oil sheikh’s playboy son on the Riviera.

“I’m not too early, am I?”

“No, fine. Come in.”

He held a bottle of white wine in one hand. Naturally. He would never—even unconsciously—do the wrong thing; she’d already expected that. He offered the bottle to her, label up.

“You didn’t say white or red,” he apologized.

“This looks exactly right,” she said. He was still waiting in the doorway. “Please come in.”

He did and she felt more comfortable.

“I just discovered we have almost nothing in the way of liquor,” she said, hoping it was spontaneous. “So I can’t offer you a drink. Should I chill this?”

“Serve cool,” he said, looking around the living room.

She couldn’t recall if he’d ever been inside the house before. His scrutiny made her edgy: as though he were evaluating her through the house. She hoped not.

“It looks different,” he said. “Nice.”

“Not like your place,” she said, but felt relieved. It was the simplicity and rich texturing of the lovers’ house that had inspired her own patchwork redecoration. “Correction on the drinks. We have sherry and a little brandy.”

“Soda? Tonic? Lemon?”

“Yes. I think so.”

“Good. I’ll throw together a brandy cocktail I know how to make. Everyone eventually ends up drinking the cooking sherry, you know.”

“This is delicious,” she said a few moments later, sipping the tall, fresh drink. “What’s it called?”

“Brandy and tonic, I guess. The British drank it in the Orient, to ward off malaria.”

She led him out onto the deck, where he held his drink up and tapped its rim against her glass.

“To your decision.”

They clinked glasses again.

“You don’t even know what my decision is yet,” she said. “I don’t think I do either.”

“No. But I support it. Whatever it is.”

Earlier in the afternoon, Stevie had pictured this very moment: the two of them here on the deck, having cocktails before dinner, the Milky Way stretched across the sky above them, the soft pounding of the surf. Several times while thinking of this moment she had panicked, wondering what they would talk about. Today, on the beach, hadn’t been a particularly illustrious beginning, she thought.

But there was no problem. At ease here, as he must be anywhere, it seemed, Jonathan immediately began to speak of Sea Mist and its residents. He’d spent several full summers here, and seemed to know the people of the resort far more fully than she or her parents. He talked about the community, the ecology of the island, with a sense of pride and an evident pleasure that made her regret having only perceived it as a beach. Jonathan seemed to know everything about Sea Mist. He knew the various birds and flowers, the incredibly varied insect life. He knew which buds on which bushes opened in May or June, which insects were attracted to their blooms, what week the flowers fell and the leaves began to turn, which birds passed over them migrating south. He’d revived birds that had flown into plate glass windows and doors, had seen those very birds return later on in the summer, and then, the following summer with their families. He’d nursed back to health during the early spring cats and dogs lost out here the summer before, who’d managed somehow to survive the brutal island winters. He knew all the constellations wheeling majestically overhead, and as he pointed them out, he could make Stevie see terribly clearly for the first time in her life why they were called Archer, Whale, Swan.

Over dinner, he continued talking—about the history of Sea Mist from its earliest days as a lookout station for shipwrecks, to the free port era in the middle half of the nineteenth century, when the China trade clippers dropped half or more of their cargo here, hiding it until it could be transported across the bay. Then they sailed into New York Harbor, where they naturally paid much lighter duties fees than they would have had they shipped in fully laden. The Ginkgo and red maple trees that grew like mad in the community all came from the Orient, he told her. They weren’t indigenous. They’d arrived as saplings, even as seedlings; gifts for wives and families. Some were a hundred and thirty years old. As were some of the large old houses on the other side of town—built by smugglers and stolen goods fences, low-life pirates whose descendants had become millionaires, stayed long enough to have streets named after them, then moved away.

He pronounced the meal a complete success—and she thought so too.

The warm night rustled indoors, touching his fine curly hair, making it glitter a strand at a time in the candlelight. His eyes were huge and dark and compelling.

He hadn’t said anything about how she looked, so she decided to bring it up in a roundabout way, by telling him that if she’d invited Bill Tierney instead of him, Bill would have dressed all wrong for the occasion.

Jonathan almost frowned; then, casually, with the wineglass tipped up to his mouth, in preparation for a sip, he said:

“One of the few advantages of aging is that generally the older one gets, the easier it is to figure out what to wear.”

“You make yourself seem as though you’re a hundred years old!” she protested.

“I recently read that people’s height begins to decline after the age of thirty-five. That means I’ve already begun to shrink. Horrible, huh?”

Unwilling to allow him to belittle himself, she said, “I think you’re beautiful.”

There was an embarrassed momentary silence.

“Thanks,” he said. “I wasn’t fishing for a compliment.”

“
I
was.” She stood up, taking the dishes.

“Didn’t I say how marvelous you looked?”

‘‘No.’’

“Well, I thought it.”

“I can’t read your thoughts,” she said. “Coffee?”

When she returned to pour it, he was standing out on the deck.

“You aren’t angry at me, are you?” he asked.

“No-o. Of course not.”

“It’s really a great night,” he said, more softly. “It hasn’t been a terrific summer for weather. Too much rain. It was cool most of July. We used blankets at night, as late as the first week of August. Damp, muggy, misty: weeks at a time. But it’s going to be really fine from now on. Better than all the rest of the summer.”

Odd; Stevie had thought exactly that this evening, watching the sunset, the geese flying.

“If it doesn’t storm again,” she said.

“It won’t.” He replied so firmly, she asked how he could be certain. She wished she could see his eyes as they spoke. How could she steer him back inside where they could look at each other? So much seemed to depend on that.

“I’m used to feeling out the moods of places I know,” he said. “It’s a telluric connection; as though a plumb line were dropped down from inside me, right into the center of the earth, with everything—the weather, the life placed around us—in a certain relationship. I don’t feel this everywhere, of course. Not in the city, for example. Here at Sea Mist, I do.”

He was the one who turned and led her inside then, where she refilled their coffee cups. Facing him over the flicker of candlelight, Stevie felt better; he’d seemed so distant out there for a minute.

“You know something,” he offered, apropos of nothing in particular, “you remind me of another girl, a girl named Fiammetta, in a story I’m working on.”

“A new show?”

He seemed surprised at her question. “Yes. A new one.”

“I loved
Little Rock.
I saw it twice. Downtown, and when it moved to Broadway.” She almost immediately regretted her gushing. The last thing she wanted was for him to think her a groupie. “Everyone is recording ‘Unreal,’ you know,” she added, hoping to make good her error.

“Not everyone,” he said, barely holding back a smile.

“Everyone is. Come on. It’s all right to be proud about that.”

“Billie Holiday isn’t recording it.”

“She’s dead. Even I know that.”

“Just testing.”

“Who’s Fiammetta?” she asked. She was dying to know whom or what he thought could compare to her.

“A young lady in thirteenth-century Florence, whose favorite hunting falcon has flown off. She sends three suitors to find a new one for her, equal to the first in speed, beauty, and prowess. Every time they return with a great hunting bird, she criticizes their selections. Each time she describes her falcon to them, it’s different: more fabulous than before. Each suitor goes farther and farther away from her, for longer periods of time, searching for a falcon she will accept. When they return, Fiammetta’s idea of the falcon has become more exaggerated. Two suitors give up eventually. But one, Gentile, continues to search. You see, he’s come to think of Fiammetta herself as so extraordinary, so unobtainable, that he believes no bird he will ever encounter can come up to her—to his own—expectations.”

Stevie would have to ponder that fable later on, she thought. Meanwhile, she had a question: “Does he marry her at the end, anyway?”

“See the show.”

“How can I, if it isn’t even completed yet?” Then, “Do you think I’m like that? Chasing after rainbows? Is that why you told me her story?”

“No. Chasing after ideals, perhaps. But don’t stop.”

“And you?” She meant to ask if he were that ideal, and unobtainable.

“Oh, naturally, I’m still going after a few ideals too, although I ought to know better by now. Otherwise I’d stop writing music, stop writing shows. I’d give up looking for the perfectly appropriate melody, the most wonderful new modulation, the ideal form for a song.”

She wondered if what he was saying explained why he always seemed to be looking just to one side of her, or any object he observed: as though he were looking for the music inside it. It was thrilling to think that besides being so handsome, so desirable, he was also an artist. Would he one day write something for her? A song? A show?

So she led them into a conversation about theater and the music world he moved in—the people, the names, the entrepreneurs, directors, writers. Jonathan smiled indulgently as though he’d been waiting for this, but he did allow himself to talk about it. Doing so, he revealed another side of his personality; he was sincere and comic at the same time, blasé but intensely opinionated, yet never critical of anyone. His main targets of abuse seemed to be the various systems he’d gotten involved with—publishing houses, recording labels, conglomerate producers. He told her that he preferred live cabaret performances of his songs best of all—or intimate stage productions in small theaters. It was all getting out of hand now, his career expanding too quickly, onto Broadway stages and who knew, films too. Of course, he understood that was a natural progression, given the need for good material in all media. And he did like the challenge of a big stage, a large orchestra and cast. So long as he could still return to his origins, to small theaters, whenever he wanted to.

He said he was merely being realistic. But Stevie thought he was finer than that—in touch with himself and his wants and needs, overmodest, mature, filled with integrity.

Then he looked at his watch and said it was time for him to go.

It was barely eleven o’clock.

“I still have work to catch up on,” he apologized. “Thanks for a lovely dinner.”

She’d somehow expected he would stay longer, make it easier for her. What could she do all night by herself, after all this stimulation? She’d go mad.

“Come by for that bookshelf checking,” he reminded her.

She almost said yes, she would, right now. But he had work to do. She mustn’t get in the way of his composing. That would be the worst thing she could do.

“Tomorrow afternoon?” she asked.

“Anytime.”

“Good night,” she said, brightened by this.

And was rewarded. He said good night, and quickly leaned forward to kiss her cheek. She sensed it coming and turned her head, taking the kiss on her lips, as one of his hands touched her left ear with the merest brush of a finger. A softness of lips, a tiny caress, and nearness. Then he was gone.

The phone was ringing again: for the third time that morning. How was he going to get any work done? He’d been at the piano all morning, trying to work out the big chorus, a triple madrigal, that would be sung when all three of Fiammetta’s suitors began their first journey in search of the falcon. But he just couldn’t get past one point in the piece; he didn’t know why. Barry’s lyrics were fine—the interweaving seemed right—why then couldn’t he make it come out sounding medieval? It always ended up vaguely French, vaguely like Gounod. He could already picture the looks on Saul’s and Amadea’s faces when he played the chorus for them; she would be kind, but afterward Amadea would sweetly ask him to look it over again. Saul would run his big fingers through his thinning long hair, and drop his head, unable to say anything, but secretly fuming, or despairing that he’d ever allowed the others to talk him into anything as monstrous as a medieval musical. Maybe Jonathan ought to set this chorus aside altogether. Come back to it when the rest of the score was done.